THERE are just nine days to go before the start of this year’s Malaysia Chess Festival. A highlight of this year’s festival will be a second visit to our shores by the 12th world chess champion, Anatoly Karpov.
He won’t be playing in any of the tournaments. Rather, he will be here for only a few days in early September before jetting off to continue with his worldwide campaign to become the next president of the World Chess Federation (Fide).
Nevertheless, spectators and participants alike at the Malaysia Chess Festival can expect to bump into the former world champion.
A keen rivalry has developed between former chess world champion Anatoly Karpov and Kirsan Ilyumzhinov for the presidency of the World Chess FederationIf you need him to autograph any of his chess books, this will be an opportunity for you.
Chess enthusiasts can also look forward to a special subscription-based buka puasa function with him on Sept 5.
When I was speaking to the organisers of the festival earlier this week, I was reminded that they were facing possibly the greatest challenges to their organisational capabilities in the last seven years.
For the first time since the inception of the Datuk Arthur Tan Malaysia open chess championship in 2004, the organisers are bracing for a rival competition in nearby Philippines to pull away some of the entries.
Yes, there is also an international chess tournament that’s been planned in Manila at almost the same time.
Normally, federations would work together to ensure that international tournaments do not overlap. It’s not difficult to understand why. If tournaments do not overlap, it would be easier to persuade players – especially professional chess players – to play in these events one after another.
It maximises their investment of time and money to fly to this region to play in the chess competitions, and all organisers are happy with the quality of players that they can attract.
Not this time.
The National Chess Federation of the Philippines (NCFP) has been promised US$100,000 (US$320,000) by Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the current Fide president, to hold a tournament in memory of his predecessor, Florencio Campomanes, who died earlier this year.
Now, with Campomanes being a Filipino and all that, there was no way that the NCFP was going to say no to holding this memorial event. But for some reason, the dates chosen for their event were pushed from mid-August to the end of August. This overlapped with the dates for the Malaysia Chess Festival.
Some people say that it had been done with a purpose.
It’s not that the NCFP is unaware that the Malaysia Chess Festival is an annual event. The festival is already in its seventh year and is well publicised around the world.
In the past, Filipino chess players have always turned up to support both the Datuk Arthur Tan Malaysia open and the Merdeka rapid chess team tournaments.
But not this year.
Word has been going around that the NCFP had advised its players in no uncertain terms that they should be playing in Manila instead of Kuala Lumpur.
Worse still, there is unconfirmed news that the top Filipino players have been threatened with bans by their federation should they ignore this “advice”.
In all likelihood, the Filipino players will not be here.
Certainly, those players who have already been selected by their federation for the Chess Olympiad in Khanty-Mansiysk will not want to jeopardise their selection status.
Those players not in the Filipino team can’t be bothered with the ban but they may be attracted to the larger prize monies at the Campomanes memorial tournament in Manila.
All this is very sad because if Campomanes were alive today, the last thing he would want was for his memorial tournament to clash with the Malaysian Chess Festival.
Campomanes has always been a very good and supportive friend of Malaysia. It was a friendship that started in 1974 and even until last year, he had been a regular visitor here.
But why, you may ask, is the NCFP risking to upset the other federations in the region?
The answer may be simply that it all boils down to relationships and the charged atmosphere that’s presently enveloping chess, an atmosphere created by the Fide election campaign.
In the world of chess, there is a close bond between Fide and the NCFP. It started with Campomanes’ election as Fide president in 1982. The bond remained after Ilyumzhinov took over the Fide reins. Even Campomanes’ death has not changed this relationship.
It is publicly known that the NCFP is supporting the Ilyumzhinov ticket at the Fide elections next month, while Malaysia’s stand has been to side with Karpov.
There are claims by Karpov’s team that the Ilyumzhinov team has been going around the world promising great rewards to national federations that support them.
Whether or not this claim can be substantiated is not for me to say but in the absence of any other explanation, any observer will be guessing that if this claim is true, then there’s every reason for the NCFP to want their Campomanes memorial tournament to succeed at the expense of the Malaysian Chess Festival.
Nevertheless, the organisers of the Malaysian Chess Festival are quite confident that the Manila event will have little impact on the success of our local festival.
“We are still enjoying very good response from the foreign players. They know Malaysian hospitality well and they know that when they play here, they are among old friends. Friendship counts a lot among real friends,” said one of the organisers.